Late last year, I announced the launch of Imagine Cup Junior, an exciting new opportunity for students aged 13-18, to engage with Microsoft’s AI for Good Initiatives and come up with big ideas to help solve big challenges. To date we’ve had over 300 educators register, which represents over 1,000 student teams, and today the opportunity to submit projects opens. Just learning about this now? No worries. It’s not too late to get involved – the challenge is open for participation until submissions close on April 17.
To recap, Imagine Cup Junior is a global challenge to empower students who are starting to learn about technology to come up with ideas for improving the world around them. At the same time, the program helps students develop 21st century, skills like the ability to communicate and collaborate and demonstrate critical thinking and creativity. The current challenge is focused on Artificial Intelligence and introduces students to Microsoft’s AI for Good initiatives so they can explore solutions to the issues that matter to them the most. This includes AI for Earth, AI for Accessibility, AI for Humanitarian Action and AI for Cultural Heritage.
We encourage you to get all of your students involved regardless of their current experience with or knowledge about artificial intelligence. We’d love to see what ideas they come up with and give them the opportunity to start to explore what can be achieved with AI!
Registering provides access to our Imagine Cup Junior resource pack with supporting content on artificial intelligence. Topics include: the Fundamentals of AI, Machine Learning, AI Applications in Real Life, Deep Learning and Neural Networks; and AI for Good. We’ve got you covered with educator guides, student guides and lesson PowerPoints that you can incorporate into your school curriculum over multiple days or weeks.
An alternative to using this content as part of your lessons is to set up an Imagine Cup Junior ‘hackathon’ where you can use the ‘Build Your Project in a Day’ kit to guide your student groups from start to finish. This great kit includes videos from AI experts at Microsoft to motivate your students along the way as they work within their teams to come up with their idea and build out the elements against the timer into a full submission, using our challenge submission templates. We’ve also introduced the new Teacher Toolkit in OneNote format to give you access to student certificates, stickers, a selfie frame and more so that you can recognize student work and the completion of their projects.
You can get started today! Register your interest in Imagine Cup Junior, download the materials, get your students into teams of between three and six and have them work on solving a big problem with the support of artificial intelligence alongside other students from across the world.
Register today at www.imaginecup.com/junior and empower students to truly make a change.
Just a reminder: This is open only to schools/instructor led clubs for students ages 13-18. Submissions close on 4/17/20. For Official Rules, see here.
